The Monthly Digest is a resource provided by Security in Context that provides a list of recent publications, calls, conferences and other items relevant to the critical global, security, and international political economy studies audience. In addition to new items, our digest may contain relatively recent entries, so please double check dates on any calls or conferences. All descriptions taken from their original sources unless otherwise indicated. If we’ve missed something, or you have items you’d like to contribute for future digests, please email us at:submissions@securityincontext.org
Books
Security and Conservation: The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade
Rosaleen Duffy
Debates regarding environmental security risks have generally focused on climate change and geopolitical water conflicts. Biodiversity conservation, however, is increasingly identified as a critical contributor to national and global security. The illegal wildlife trade is often articulated as a driver of biodiversity losses, and as a source of finance for organized crime networks, armed groups, and even terrorist networks. Conservationists, international organizations, and national governments have raised concerns about “convergence” of wildlife trafficking with other serious offenses, including theft, fraud, corruption, drugs and human trafficking, counterfeiting, firearms smuggling, and money laundering.
In Security and Conservation, Rosaleen Duffy examines the scale, practical reality, and future implications of the growing integration of biodiversity conservation with global security concerns. Duffy takes a political ecology approach to develop a deeper understanding of how and why wildlife conservation turned toward security‑oriented approaches to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.
Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria
Muriam Haleh Davis
In Markets of Civilization Muriam Haleh Davis provides a history of racial capitalism, showing how Islam became a racial category that shaped economic development in colonial and postcolonial Algeria. French officials in Paris and Algiers introduced what Davis terms “a racial regime of religion” that subjected Algerian Muslims to discriminatory political and economic structures. These experts believed that introducing a market economy would modernize society and discourage anticolonial nationalism. Planners, politicians, and economists implemented reforms that both sought to transform Algerians into modern economic subjects and drew on racial assumptions despite the formally color-blind policies of the French state. Following independence, convictions about the inherent link between religious beliefs and economic behavior continued to influence development policies. Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella embraced a specifically Algerian socialism founded on Islamic principles, while French technocrats saw Algeria as a testing ground for development projects elsewhere in the Global South. Highlighting the entanglements of race and religion, Davis demonstrates that economic orthodoxies helped fashion understandings of national identity on both sides of the Mediterranean during decolonization.
Enacting the Security Community: ASEAN's Never-ending Story
STÉPHANIE MARTEL
Enacting the Security Community illuminates the central role of discourse in the making of security communities through a case study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Despite decades of discussion, scholars of political science and international relations have long struggled to identify what kind of security community ASEAN is striving to become.
Talk about security, Stéphanie Martel argues in this innovative study, is more than empty rhetoric. It is precisely through discourse that ASEAN is brought into being as a security community. Martel analyzes the epic narratives that state and non-state actors tell about ASEAN's journey to becoming a security community, featuring a colorful cast of heroes and monsters. Chapters address a wide spectrum of current regional security concerns, from the South China Sea disputes to the Rohingya crisis, and nontraditional challenges like natural disasters and pandemics. Through fieldwork and in-depth interviews with practitioners, Martel provides clear evidence that discourse is key to sustaining regional organizations like ASEAN.
Enacting the Security Community is an incisive contribution to debates among scholars and practitioners about security communities as well as the role of discourse in the study of world politics, and essential reading for students of Southeast Asian international relations, politics, and security.
Scholarships/Fellowships
Call for Applications: Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study
Application deadline: July 1, 2022.
The General Fellowship Programme
For this programme, candidates may come from any discipline within the humanities and social sciences
The Barbro Klein Fellowship Programme
This fellowship is open to scholars from across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on research on cultural and social diversity, cultural heritage and creativity, societal structures and public resistance, in local and global perspective
The Global Horizons Fellowship Programme
This programme is open to scholars engaged in research in the field of global governance in the thematic areas of Global Knowledge Cultures and Kegimes: Global Political Predicaments; and Global Futures
Located in the Botanic Garden in Uppsala, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) is a national institute for advanced study. 'The collections of Carolina Rediviva Library and other scientific facilities at Uppsala University are situated nearby.
For the academic year 2023-24 the Collegium offers residential fellowships for senior and early-career scholars from all countries. The fellowships afford scholars the opportunity to concentrate on their own research interests. Fellows are expected to be in residence and to participate in academic events beyond their own fields of specialization. The application may be for the entire academic year or alternatively or one academic semester.
The holder of a fellowship receives a monthly salary. Accommodation for Fellows who do not live in the Stockholm-Uppsala region is arranged by the Collegium and all Fellows have their own fully equipped office at the Collegium.
Journal Articles
Reflections on IPS in Translation
Kyle Grayson, Nicole Sunday Grove
International Political Sociology
We are honored to be stepping in as the new editorial team for International Political Sociology (IPS). We take seriously the vital task before us of continuing to expand a creative and agonistic space for transdisciplinary scholars around the world to shape and intervene in questions and issues of global importance and in ways that matter to them. In a time of profound political challenges, we remain committed to IPS as a project that emphasizes multiple ways of engaging and responding to the world as well as seeking different visions of a more emancipatory politics to come together. As a brief and insufficient introduction to our editorial tenure, we want to reflect on some of the foundational interventions that have shaped the journal's critical ethos as well as emerging areas of conceptual, methodological, theoretical, and empirical inquiry that we hope to foster.
Provincialising security: materiality and sensoriality
Ana Ivasiuc
Critical Studies on Security
Security has come to embody a self-evident and much sought-after kind of good, and has come to colonise imaginaries, debates, policies, and large swathes of what social life means in various corners of the world. Echoing postcolonial calls for decentring that which is taken for granted, my essay seeks to provincialise security in three distinct ways. Drawing on my research on the securitisation of the Roma in Italy, first, I trace the transformation of the term sicurezza from safety to security in a recent-historical perspective, showing how the notion morphed from bodily integrity to a much more blurred – though taken for granted – concept. Second, using a non-representational approach grounded in new materialism, I show that what hides beneath the ubiquitous talk of sicurezza surrounding the Roma nowadays are dimensions of materiality and sensoriality that construct insecurity in a relational and ever-shifting manner. Third, I privilege the perspective of the Roma in a decolonising move that questions their securitisation and the overall framing of Roma-related concerns as a security problem. Finally, I show the productivity of the topology framework in provincialising both security, and the western-centric theory production around it.
Lectures & Webinars
Abortion, Religion, and Race in Post-Roe America, Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights
Jun 30, 2022 01:00 PM (EST)
Live-streamed on Facebook.com/RUCSRR
The U.S. Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v. Wade has rightfully triggered a national debate about the role of religion in lawmaking, women's rights to control their reproductive health, and the racially disparate impact of state prohibitions on abortion. On June 30 at 1 pm EST, join the Center for Security, Race and Rights as we host a discussion by legal scholars Asifa Quraishi-Landes, Sahar Aziz, and Cynthia Soohoo on the legal, political, and social implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Job Openings
Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice, Murray State University
Full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor position to begin August 15, 2022.
Duties include teaching four courses per semester (12 hours), advising students, publishing research and engaging in scholarly activities, and university/professional service including student recruiting, committee work, and other assignments. The Criminal Justice Program emphasizes excellence in teaching. Courses within the program are largely offered face-to-face with some courses offered online. Applicant must be willing to teach online and must be qualified to teach courses in procedural justice, crime causation, drugs and crime, juvenile delinquency, and corrections.
For best consideration, please submit a completed application along with all required materials by June 27, 2022. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
